That might have seemed like the usual sort of defensive statement
that someone in as tight a spot as Corwin Ravenhair would come up with
at the age of not-quite-eleven, but in Corwin's case, it had the
advantage of being true, and even verifiable. Leonard Hutchins himself,
if confronted with this assertion, would have had to admit that, yes, it
was all his fault.

Leonard was the one who was bored. Leonard was the one who suggested
they hop the N over to New Avalon International Spaceport and watch the
starships come and go. Leonard was the one, furthermore, who had
mentioned the new automated baggage handling system that had been
installed at this, the busiest of New Avalon's three spaceport
facilities.

That Corwin had then insisted on investigating said system could not
be held on his account, as any rational sapient lifeform should
accept that, Len having mentioned it, Corwin was obliged to check
it out.

That they subsequently got baggage-handled and wound up on the 11:40
Federated Express metaspace run to Kane's World is mainly the fault of
the somewhat inattentive gentleman who programmed the new system.

Fortunately, cargo runners are pressurized.

"OK," said Len, hands in his pockets, calm and collected. He
leaned against the concrete post holding up the ceiling of the New
Gotham Transit Authority's City Center station and composed himself for
thought. "We managed to get out of the spaceport without getting
arrested. That's a start."

"Not much of one, though," Corwin replied. He sat down on the floor,
rummaged through his battered black leather satchel, and sighed. "How
much money have you got on you?"

Corwin was the elder, by about an hour, but Len looked the part. He
was slightly taller, slightly slimmer, the lines of his face a bit more
mature-looking below his jagged rust-orange bangs. The rest of his
coarse, heavy hair was gathered into a thick sheaf that trailed off down
his back. Corwin was shorter, a bit wider, and overall the more boyish-
looking of the two. His coal-black hair was short but thick, jumbled in
an unruly crest atop his head, with one thumb-thick forelock sticking
out in front that he could never seem to do anything with.

Both were dressed for a day's exploration, in simple, sturdy clothes,
Corwin in jeans, button-front canvas shirt and Army jacket, Len in
military cargo pants, a sweatshirt and gray trenchcoat. Both wore good,
strong boots, Corwin's black and buckled, Len's brown and laced.
Neither had a hat. Fortunately, it wasn't raining. By the feel of the
air as they reached the street level, it was either spring or fall, cool
but not cold. Impossible to tell which, though, for this was New Gotham
City, and there were no trees around to give them a hint.

They walked down the street, not paying much attention to their
surroundings. Which isn't to say they were oblivious to them - neither
boy was careless in such matters - but they were a bit preoccupied, and
so only paying subliminal attention, stepping around other people on the
crowded sidewalks and avoiding lampposts and parking meters. As they
walked, they discussed in quiet tones their predicament and what to do
about it.

"We're not really in that much of a fix," Len observed calmly. "All
we have to do is call home and admit what we did. Dad will come get
us."

"Oh sure, that's a great idea," Corwin pretended to agree. "And then
we get to hear about how dangerous it was for the rest of the
year, and we never get to go anywhere near the spaceport again
without a tracking implant."

"Well, then why don't we find a mirror and you can call your Aunt
Bell? She won't scold us too badly."

"No, but she might tell Aunt Urd, and then I'd never hear the
end of it. 'Hey, Corwin, tell me again about your trip to New Gotham!'
'Will you be flying out with your dad for New Year's, or will you just
ship yourself?'"

Len looked a little rueful. "Yeah, you've got a point. I suppose
your mom's out of the question, then."

Corwin rolled his eyes. "She'd be torn. On the one hand, it was a
wicked neat hack. On the other hand, it was a stupid thing to do. Her
maternal instinct would conflict with her hacker imperative. She might
short out or something."

"Hm," said Len, nodding. "Maybe Hiroshi could - " He stopped, both
speaking and walking, just then, and held out his hand, palm flat
against Corwin's chest, to stop him too.

"What?" Corwin murmured.

"Trouble," Len replied. "See that guy in the black coat?"

Corwin saw him. "The one walking behind the girl in the green
dress?"

"He's not walking behind her. He has a gun in her back. He's
forcing her into that car."

Corwin looked, and indeed the two were approaching a car - an
outstandingly ugly one, as it happened, that would have caught his eye
sooner under less preoccupying circumstances. It was a SEAT Grandee, a
truly regrettable executive blingmobile built on nearby Nueva Castilla,
easily distinguished by its bulging (but somehow not sporty) fenders,
its ten-foot-long coffin hood, and its hugely ostentatious hood
ornament, which was a chunk of synthetic crystal about the size of a
baseball that was supposed to, but did not, put the viewer in mind of a
brilliant-cut diamond. They seemed weirdly popular with some segment of
New Gotham's population; Corwin had noticed, in a detached sort of way,
that nearly every car in this part of the city that wasn't an S-class
Mercedes-Benz seemed to be a Grandee.

Corwin didn't ask his brother how he was so sure about the
significance of the car and the man in the black coat. Len just seemed
to know these things. Instead he merely tightened up a little,
readying for action, and asked, "So what's the plan?"

There was no question as to whether they should get involved. Of
course they shouldn't get involved. They were strangers to this city
and had literally no idea who they might be messing with.

Of course they were going to get involved. There was a lady in
trouble.

"No time to plan," said Len. "Just follow my lead."

If he'd had time, Corwin might have expressed his theoretical
appreciation for a little more advance notice than that, but he
didn't have any, since Len had already started running.

Stifling the kind of curse that would get him smacked on the head in
Valkyrie training, Corwin followed. For the first couple of steps, his
plan, inasmuch as he had one, was to follow Len in and hit the gunman
low while Len hit him high. As they approached the car, though, he
noticed something that changed the picture entirely. Fortunately, he
was trained to handle contingencies like this, and by the time he'd
taken two more steps, he'd adjusted his strategy accordingly.

Lacking a proper weapon, Len made do with the only one available to
him and hit the gunman with a solid shoulder block. Unprepared for the
sudden broadside attack, the man was flung against the side of the car,
his jaw bouncing off the corner of the roof with a painful noise. He
lost his grip on his pistol, dropping it to the pavement.

Corwin, meanwhile, detoured around the girl and the open car door she
was standing next to, sparing a moment to glance at her as he passed.
She was pretty, with neatly bobbed auburn hair, very pale skin, and the
darkest eyes he'd ever seen - he thought, as he made fleeting eye
contact with her, that they were genuinely black. Either that or her
pupils were massively dilated. Her affect was surely a bit flat
for someone who was in the middle of being forced into a car at
gunpoint. Maybe they'd drugged her? Though if that were the case, why
the gun?

No time to consider that now. The car's driver had emerged from his
seat and pulled out his own gun, which he was aiming over the roof at
Len as the redheaded boy stepped back and kicked the dropped pistol
under the car.

Corwin put a hand on the fender and vaulted the Grandee's vast hood,
his draconic warstaff appearing in his hand as he slid across the
slickly polished metal. He swung the weapon hard, adding the force of
his arms to the momentum of his slide, and clobbered the driver in the
face as he came off the other side of the hood. Swearing, the driver
recoiled, raising his free hand to his bloodied nose. Corwin planted
his feet, pivoted, and hit the driver again from the opposite
direction.

The two men, both stunned by the sudden violence that had invaded
their peaceful little kidnapping, were clearly in disbelief about
who was attacking them as they gathered their wits and tried to
mount some kind of counterattack. Len's dance partner produced a
tactical baton from inside his heavy black coat and, with a grunt of
mingled effort and rage, took a swing that would have taken Len's head
off had it connected.

It was so badly telegraphed, however, that there was no realistic
chance of that. Len moved out of his way with a Katsujinkenryuu empty-
hand counter, grabbed his arm, and twisted. Yelling in pain, the
man dropped the baton. Len caught it, released him with a shove that
sent him stumbling back against the side of the car, and then gave him a
quick, precise blow to the side of the neck with the baton. He crumpled
to the ground without another sound.

As for the driver, he still had hold of his gun, and now that he had
some of his wits collected he intended to use it. He raised it and
aimed. Just as he fired, Corwin smacked it aside with his staff, using
a whirling strike that added more energy to the blow. The bullet tore
through the hood of the gunman's own car, raising a small geyser of
steam as it punctured a coolant line. The recoil, added to the impact,
tore the weapon from the gunman's smarting hand and sent it bouncing
across the hood, out of sight.

"Nice shot," Corwin told him.

Bigger and stronger than the man who'd been herding the girl into the
car, the driver wasn't about to be taunted by a kid who looked like he
should've been sitting final exams in the sixth grade. His face purpled
with rage and he lunged forward, seizing Corwin's shoulders with big,
meaty hands and leaning over him like an avalanche about to fall.

"You little bastard," he snarled, his breath - weirdly minty, Corwin
thought, like he'd only just brushed his teeth - palpable on the young
demigod's tattooed forehead. "You need to learn to mind your own god
damn business."

"Never been very good at that," Corwin agreed.

Then he lunged forward and rammed the top of his head into the
underside of the man's jaw. That hurt more than he was expecting,
enough to make him see stars, but it hurt the driver even more; he had
been just about to make some other profound statement, and the sudden,
violent closure of his jaw had made him nearly bite off part of his
tongue. He reeled, roaring with pain, and Corwin staggered back,
shaking his head and trying to clear it before his opponent could renew
hostilities.

He needn't have worried. The driver wasn't going to be making
another offensive anytime soon. The baton formerly possessed by his
colleague made certain of that by belting him solidly in the back of the
head and laying him out next to the Grandee like a felled tree.

"Corwin? You OK?" Len asked as he scrambled down from the top of
the car.

"We better get out of here," said Len. He collapsed the baton and
stuck it in his trenchcoat's inside pocket. "These guys might have
backup."

"Good idea." Corwin rounded the front of the car and saw the girl in
the green dress still standing in the same spot, looking around at the
chaos surrounding them with a look of faint surprise. "Come on," he
said to her, taking hold of her wrist. "Let's get - whoa."

The last came because, when he tugged on her arm to add emphasis to
"come on," she didn't move. At all. It was like trying to catch the
arm of a bronze statue. Slowly, she looked down at his hand on her
wrist, then raised her eyes to meet his again. Her movements were very
precise and accompanied by very faint sounds - very faint, but instantly
recognizable to Corwin.

He blinked. "Oh hey," he said. "You're a robot."

The girl tilted her head very slightly.

"That's correct," she said. Her voice was a clear alto and perfectly
lifelike, devoid of any mechanical overtones, though her diction, like
her movements, was unnaturally precise.

"Are we about to feel really stupid," Len asked, "or were
those guys kidnapping you?"

"Technically, I cannot be kidnapped," she said. "Kidnapping is the
unlawful abduction of one person by another. I am not a person."

"Let's split the legal hairs later," said Len. "Were they taking you
against your will?"

Knowing the robotic mind better than Len, Corwin shook his head and
put in before she could reply, "Were they entitled to take you?"

"No," she said, and then added in a perfectly calm, matter-of-fact
way, "Also, I believe they intend me harm."

The girl considered this for a moment, then inclined her head very
slightly. "Very well," she said, and permitted Corwin to lead her away
from the scene.

They moved deeper into the city, heading toward the tallest
buildings, which Corwin and Len assumed would be downtown.

"I think we're in over our heads," Len observed. "Like it or not, we
have to call someone now."

Corwin sighed. "Yeah, you're probably right. Though I'd rather not
do that until I know more about what's going on." He looked back over
his shoulder. "I don't think anyone's following us. We ought to find a
place to hole up and get as much information as we can before we make
the call."

Len looked at the expressionless young woman with them. "Miss? Are
you from around here?"

She slowly turned to look at him. "I've never been outside New
Gotham," she confirmed.

"We need to find somewhere public, where we can use a crowd as cover,
but less exposed than out on the street," Len explained. "Someplace
where, if anyone else comes looking for you, we can see them
coming."

She thought about that for a second, then nodded. "This way," she
said.

A few minutes later, they were on the top floor of a building on the
edge of downtown, of modest height compared to the towers a few blocks
further toward the center, but tall enough to have a commanding view
back the way they had come. Most of the building was offices, but the
top two floors seemed to be a sort of shopping mall, complete with a
food court in one corner. They went to the table in the far corner and
tried to be as inconspicuous as possible.

"Let's start at the beginning," said Len while Corwin hunted in his
satchel for his mobilecomm unit. "What's your name?"

The girl regarded him with her very dark eyes for a moment, then
said, "R. Dorothy Wayneright."

"Who were those men that were trying to ki - ... er, steal
you?"

"I don't know specifically," Dorothy said. "They work for a local
crime boss. His name would have no meaning to you. He believes my
creator owes him a great deal of money. I was being... collected as
payment for that debt."

"It wasn't your doing," Dorothy said. She seemed ever-so-faintly
puzzled, as if unsure what this complete stranger had to apologize
for.

"Does he have any heirs? Your creator? Anyone who will have...
uh... inherited you now?" Len asked.

Dorothy shook her head. "He was alone. That's why he built me."

"We're up," said Corwin, having found the subether booster antenna
and affixed it to his mobilecomm. "OK, let's see if I can get on the
local network so I don't have to set up a subether tunnel clear back to
- ... that's weird."

"What's weird?" Len asked.

Corwin peered at the comm unit's status display, fiddled with a knob,
and then switched to a different screen. "That's really weird.
I'm picking up some kind of subetheric signal. It's not on any of the
regular bands, I just ran across it doing a band search." He held the
unit up and moved it from side to side, as if it were a tricorder, then
pointed it at Dorothy. "And it seems to be coming from you."

"A homing signal?" Len asked.

"I don't think so," Corwin said. "Looks more sophisticated than
that. Some kind of automation system command signal, maybe." He raised
an eyebrow at Dorothy, inviting comment. She looked back at him,
stonily silent. With a shrug, he started adjusting some of the unit's
finer settings. "Let me see if I can figure out what it's supposed to
do... "

Len turned to look out the window, then stiffened, blinking. "Uh...
Corwin?" he said, reaching across the table to tap on Corwin's arm.

"Not now, Len, I'm busy."

Len changed from tapping to tugging his brother's sleeve. "
Corwin."

Exasperated, Corwin looked up from the comm unit's screen. "Look, do
you want me to trace this signal or noooohhhh crap."

Around them, other people started noticing, and within a few seconds,
panic gripped the food court as everyone reacted to the giant, vaguely-
woman-shaped robot that was approaching the building, presumably without
proper authorization from the City of New Gotham.

"That's going to be a problem," Corwin mused.

"Why's it headed this way?" Len wondered.

Dorothy rose slowly to her feet, her face even blanker than usual,
and when she spoke it was in a low, completely uninflected murmur.

"Dorothy-Two," she said. "Search priority alpha. Override one one
one."

"What does that mean?" Corwin asked. Getting no response, he rose,
put a hand on her shoulder, and said in a more forceful tone, "
Dorothy. Situation report."

Dorothy seemed to come back from some distance away, her eyes
refocusing, and she turned to look at him with some signs of effort.
"Part of her command circuitry is built into me," she said. "That's
what the men you took me from wanted. To remove it from me so that they
would have complete control over her."

Len eyed her sidelong. "For the record, it would've been helpful if
you had mentioned that before," he said dryly.

"I didn't know it could broadcast a signal," Dorothy said. "No one
ever explained its workings to me. I was only intended to... carry
it."

Corwin turned to look at the approaching robot. "That's a Big Fire
terrormech. I'd bet anything on it." He shook his head. "That
explains a lot."

Len blinked. "It does?"

"Well, how many other criminal organizations do you know of that have
a use for giant robots? It's not like they offer any particular
advantage to bank robbers or drug smugglers. And Big Fire's always
fooling around with hopelessly baroque control systems." He turned to
Dorothy. "Do you know if that has a pilot on board?"

"No," Dorothy said. "If her control system were complete, she'd be
autonomous. There's no place for a cockpit."

Corwin turned and put his hand against the window, gazing intently at
the approaching robot and shutting out the chaos and panic behind
him.

"Think, Corwin," he muttered to himself. "Reason it out. If its
control system is incomplete, someone must be operating it with a manual
proxy system. That means short range." He turned, picked up his
mobilecomm, and consulted its display again. "I'm not seeing any other
anomalous subether activity or unaccountable radio traffic, so they're
probably using a laser link. That means line-of-sight." Turning to the
window again, he scanned the immediate area around the building they
were in. "They need it to be mobile. That means a vehicle. Probably a
van or something like."

Len pointed. "There."

Corwin looked and saw what he was pointing at: a multi-story parking
garage, catercornered off the square in front of their building, with
each deck open at the sides.

"Yeah," he agreed. "That looks likely."

"I'll check it out."

Corwin nodded. "Look for a van with a laser array on the roof. I'll
see what I can do from this end."

Len made for the fire stairs at a dead run and disappeared through
the door. The food court was nearly deserted now; down below, Corwin
could see people streaming from the building into the square. A few
moments later, a phalanx of black vans appeared from side streets,
blocking the exits from the square, and men in black jumpsuits and
matching pointed hoods started piling out and rounding up the
civilians.

He turned to Dorothy, who stood next to him watching the proceedings
down below. Only a slight narrowing of her eyes betrayed any state of
mind other than total impassivity.

"This bit of the giant robot's control circuitry you have in you," he
asked. "Is it a module, or is it integrated in your own systems?"

"It's a separate part. I saw it before Fa... my creator installed
it."

"Where is it?"

Dorothy turned to face him fully. "Why?"

"I can't remove it if I don't know where it is, can I?" Corwin asked
rhetorically.

"Why would you do that?"

"Simple. You don't have it any more, they stop chasing you. Right?"

"My internal mechanisms are very delicate," said Dorothy. "A blind
attempt to remove the device could do a great deal of damage."

"Well... " Corwin tilted his head toward the window. "I can
guarantee that I care about that more than they do."

Dorothy hesitated, a very faintly fearful look edging onto her face.
"You have a point."

I should have asked, Len remarked to himself as he entered the
parking garage, what it is I'm supposed to do when I find this
van. Ah, well.

Avoiding the Black Hoods who swept in to surround the office building
had been surprisingly simple, given that he wasn't equipped for any kind
of stealth. Once inside the garage, he had a decision to make: start
from the top or the bottom? Reasoning that the upper levels would
provide better lines of sight, he climbed the stairs to the uppermost
deck and started his search there.

Up in the now-empty food court, Corwin swept the dishes from one of
the larger tables, then took off his jacket and began rolling up his
sleeves as Dorothy climbed onto the table. As she arranged herself (to
the faint sounds of gunfire and police sirens from outside, and the
steady crashing tread of the approaching giant robot), she glanced
sideways at Corwin, the fear on her face making her seem fully human to
him for the first time.

He expected her to form some objection regarding his age, but
instead, she gazed intently into his eyes for a few seconds, then lay
back, closed her eyes, and shut down, becoming very, very still.

Corwin dug in his satchel, found his sonic screwdriver, and stood for
a couple of seconds in silent conference with himself before setting to
work.

Len found the van on the second-from-the-top level of the parking
garage, backed into a space about halfway along the side facing the
square. Like the ones down below, it was black with heavily tinted
windows, but, just as Corwin had predicted, it had a laser
communications emitter on its roof, tracking slowly southwestward as it
maintained its lock on the advancing robot. Len looked and saw that the
robot was within two or three giant strides of the building where Corwin
and Dorothy still were.

As he watched, it drew back its arm, preparing to deal a gigantic
punch to the uppermost level of that building. Plainly, then, these
guys didn't care about capturing Dorothy intact; they figured they'd
just fish what they needed out of her wreckage.

Once again there was no time to plan; once again Len's instincts
carried him through. He broke into a run, sprinting past the noses of
parked cars and trucks. About halfway to the van, he passed the front
of yet another SEAT Grandee. Without slackening his pace, he reached
out and wrenched the hood ornament from its mountings, setting off the
car's alarm. Taking two more strides, he wound up and hurled the chunk
of mock diamond as hard as he could.

Len's aim was true. The Grandee's hood ornament smashed the van's
delicate laser array to tangled scrap; even if the laser had kept
working, it would have been impossible to aim. It lost lock with the
giant robot's receiver instantly.

Aboard the robot, safety protocols kicked in, disengaging the partial
control system and shutting the machine down to prevent it from running
wild in the absence of a proper command signal. It ground to a halt,
freezing in position with its knockout punch half-delivered.

Len didn't stick around to admire his handiwork. As soon as the hood
ornament hit the laser, he skidded to a halt, reversed course, and beat
it for the stairs. By the time the startled Big Fire robot controller
and his engineer/driver had extracted themselves from the control rig in
the back of the van and emerged to see what had cut them off, he was
gone.

Dorothy's internal mechanisms were delicate, though that had
mainly to do with their complexity and the fineness of their
interrelation with one another. She was built to standards of tolerance
well beyond anything Corwin had ever seen before, a multitude of fragile
parts that interlocked, when properly assembled, into a robust and
durable whole, like some twenty-fifth-century descendant of a Harrison
marine chronometer. Once he had her outer casing open, he felt somewhat
less bold than he had when he proposed this operation.

Also, the continuing firefight outside and the giant robot advancing
steadily toward him were not what he would call aids to his
concentration. All in all, he was looking at a tall order for a fully
qualified adult robot mechanic, let alone a nearly-eleven-year-old
boy.

He pushed it all out of his head and went to work. The look in
Dorothy's eyes just before she shut herself down remained always in the
back of his mind. He knew without doubt that, despite their muted
presentation, she had emotions. The trust she showed by shutting down
like that, placing herself completely in his hands, touched him clean
through. The worst possible thing he could do was fail that trust, no
matter what the outside circumstances.

But far from compounding the pressure on him, that thought held it at
bay, keeping his eye clear and his hand steady as he delved into
Dorothy's fantastically sophisticated inner structure in search of the
item that didn't belong. It wasn't hard to find; the trick was in
removing it without disturbing the systems around it, then clearing away
all trace of its passage and restoring her to full working order.

It may have been a tall order for an adult roboticist, but Corwin
Ravenhair happened to be the son of Skuld Ravenhair, the Norse goddess
of technology. He'd grown up playing with the most sophisticated
inventions in the universe the way other kids had chemistry sets. He
had what his own mother had once called a weapons-grade aptitude for
hardware. He was famous in his family circle for having been able to
say "multiprocessor" before he could say "mommy".

The rest of the world disappeared. Time ceased to have meaning.
There was only this task, only these fantastically advanced systems,
only the glow of this synthetic but no less genuine life, sleeping while
his hands extracted this ugly anomaly from within it.

Only when he had it out, and Dorothy's casing closed, did he realize
that the giant robot was standing right outside, its fist raised, but
had for some reason neglected to smash him to bits.

"Hm," he said, and then, because there was nothing he could do about
the giant robot either way, he put his tools away, re-composed Dorothy's
clothing - only now, with the technical considerations dealt with, did
it occur to him, slightly red-faced, how completely lifelike her
construction was beneath them - and leaned down to speak her name
quietly into her ear.

She opened her eyes and sat up, looking at him with a very mildly
curious expression.

"How do you feel?" Corwin asked.

After a moment's pause, Dorothy replied, "Diagnostics complete. No
faults detected." Cocking her head slightly, she added, "You did
it."

Corwin smiled and held up the item he'd removed, a small black
rectangle that was completely at odds with the elegant precision of
everything else he'd found inside her. He opened his mouth to say
something, but before he could, the fire doors banged open and Black
Hoods swarmed into the food court, brandishing their submachineguns and
generally being as fearsome as possible.

Corwin kept himself between them and Dorothy, telling her quietly,
"Stay behind me," as she got down from the table.

"This is what you're looking for," he said, holding up the little
black module. "Let's make a deal."

The Black Hoods' Q-Boss, distinctive in his red hood and blazer over
white dress trousers, made his way to the front and coughed
discreetly.

"I don't think you're really in a position to negotiate, kid," he
said. "Here's the deal: Hand over the gadget and the girl and maybe
you'll walk out of here alive."

Corwin shook his head. "Not good enough," he said. "You see, I
promised her that I wouldn't let anything happen to her." He waggled
the device. "This is all you really want anyway. It's the rest of the
control system for your terrormech there. Plug it in and embarrassing
things like that stop happening to it," he added, gesturing with his
head toward its curious immobility.

"He's bluffing," one of the Black Hoods sneered. "Wayneright said he
wasn't sure he could get that thing out of the girl without
wrecking her. There's no way a friggin' fifth-grader pulled it off in a
food court."

"You got a multiband comm unit? Scan us," Corwin said. "This device
is producing the command signal you followed here. Not the girl."

Q-Boss snapped his fingers. One of the other Black Hoods put up his
submachinegun and produced a scanning device instead. He played it over
first Corwin, then Dorothy, then turned to his boss and nodded.

"He's telling the truth. The signal's coming from him."

"Let me get this straight," Q-Boss said. "You're proposing that you
give me the widget, we take our robot and leave, and you walk away with
the girl?"

Corwin shrugged. "Why not? You get what you really came for."

Q-Boss looked around as if he couldn't quite believe that Corwin
hadn't fully grasped the situation, then said, "I'm not really seeing
why you think you're in any position to make a deal here, to be honest.
I got 30 guys with guns here, and you got... a sonic screwdriver.
What's to stop me just blowing you away and taking everything?"

"You'd be amazed what a sonic screwdriver can do in the right hands,"
Corwin said.

He and the Big Fire boss stared each other down for a few tense,
brittle seconds.

Then Q-Boss laughed and said, "You got balls, kid. I can't help but
admire that. OK, you got a deal. Gimme the gadget and you and the
girl walk."

"Well-bargained and done," said Corwin, tossing the module across.
Q-Boss caught it and tucked it into his inside coat pocket.

Now he decides to kill me anyway, Corwin thought, and I
have to get real creative, but to his surprise, Q-Boss turned
to go, gesturing to his men.

"C'mon, boys. Let's jet before the Bat - "

ding!

The elevator doors opened, revealing a tall man clad from head to toe
in black armor.

"... shows... up... hell!" Q-Boss snarled.

Corwin had heard of Gotham City's costumed champion, the notorious
Batman, before. He knew, in fact, that this particular one was the
third (or possibly fourth) man to hold the title, and that he'd been
active for a little more than four years at this point. He hadn't
really expected to see him here, though he'd certainly been
hoping he'd show up.

And now he had a front-row seat as the Batman stepped out of the
elevator into a crowd of 30 heavily armed Big Fire Black Hoods and,
without saying a word, quickly and efficiently beat them all right the
hell up.

Once he'd finished with that, the black-clad man turned and walked
across the food court to Corwin, who still stood with Dorothy behind
him.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice low and just slightly raspy
- very similar to what Corwin's father's neighbor Marty Rose called his
"work voice".

"Fine," Corwin said. "The Q-Boss has a black electronic module in
his inside pocket. It's part of the control system for that terrormech
outside. And it doesn't work," he added.

"How do you know that?" Batman asked.

"Because I broke it," Corwin replied, holding up his sonic
screwdriver with a grin.

An hour later, Corwin and Len were standing, along with Dorothy, out
by the still-frozen terrormech's feet, waiting to sign transcripts of
their statements to the police while New Gotham Public Works Department
personnel tried to figure out how they were going to remove the giant
robot from the middle of Sloane Square.

"Uh-oh," Len said, leaning toward his brother.

"What?" Corwin asked.

"Here comes trouble," said Len, pointing.

"Uh-oh," Corwin agreed, for passing through the police cordon,
clearing her way with a flash of her Lens, came Leonard's mother - Kei
Morgan, the Red Lensman, one of the principal Experts of Justice.

"Gentlemen," said Kei as she approached. "I believe you're supposed
to be in New Avalon."

"Uh, well... that's true," Len allowed.

"Imagine, therefore, my surprise when I learn that you are instead in
the Conroy sector, screwing with the local Big Fire operations." Kei
folded her arms. "That happens to be my job."

"I - " Corwin began.

"It - " said Len.

Kei silenced them both with a glare that could've split concrete.

Which she was able to maintain for about three-quarters of a second
before breaking into a huge grin.

"I can't wait to find out how you managed to get into this,"
she said. "Come on, Batman and I cleared your statements with the cops.
Let's get the hell outta here before your father finds out what's going
on."

Corwin and Len exchanged guarded looks of surprised glee -
lucky! - and moved to follow her as she walked away. Then Corwin
paused and turned back to see Dorothy hanging back, looking
uncertain.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

Looking around at the various preoccupied cops, she said hesitantly,
"I suppose I'm... evidence."

"Nah," Corwin told her. "The widget's evidence. And I took it
out."

"You... you did," she agreed.

"Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"Well... you can come with me if you want," Corwin offered, holding
out a hand.

Dorothy looked at it for a moment, then raised her eyes to look into
his.